The French and Indian War started last night.
If anything, the most surprising thing is how close the results were to real history. Jumonville died while trying to talk to George Washington, and battles broke out so eventually the French and British empires would come in conflict.
It was also surprising how many people achieved their goals. Basically everyone, I think, including the deceased Jumonville.
Maybe I should start at the beginning. It will almost certainly help if you read the character information.
First off, the game was based off of, but heavily modified from, The Bloody Forks of the Ohio by Jason Morningstar. I had to modify a lot of it to fit more the sort of LARP I was trying to run, but it still provided an awesome situation and set of characters to play. I took that game, stripped off the system, modified the characters somewhat and made a more specific situation. In the process I sometimes got another step or two away from real history, though some additional internet history helped keep things close-ish to what really happened.
We had seven players, two GMs:
Steve played George Washington,
Geoff played William Trent,
Stacie played "French Margaret" Montour,
Adam played Shingas the Terrible,
Matthew played Half-King Tanaghrisson,
Wendy played Marie-Amable Prudhomme de Villiers
and Russell played Joseph Coulon de Jumonville.
Amber and I GMed. Jacob Van Braam, Torrence Swiney, Captain Pipe Hopocan, and Raspberry Girl all were sadly unplayed. Raspberry Girl and Ignatius Jones remained important as NPCs, though, as the relationship between the British and the Delaware was a key point in the game.
Language played a key role in the game (as in real history): some characters only spoke English, some only spoke French. All the native americans spoke Shawnee (in addition to their own nation's language). Many characters spoke two or more languages. But this meant that some of the key players could not talk to one another: Jumonville only spoke French, Washington only English. Shingas the Terrible and Washington would determine jointly if the Delware would work with Britain, but did not share a language. They all needed the assistance of translators to communicate. This was all handled in the LARP by a series of hand signals: an upraised hand like Indians use in old bad movies meant you were speaking Shawnee, and a clenched fist meant you spoke in French. This actually worked really well, from what I saw.
Which brings up another point: there was a noticeable amount of player/character knowledge separation going on. Several characters had their most hidden secret right on their name badge for everyone to see (including the unplayed Torrence Swiney's awesome Key of "secretly a woman"). And everyone spoke in English, so you could tell if your character was dealing with an untrustworthy translator, even if your character could not.
Overall, the system used planned on there being more mechanical conflicts than there actually were. Very few people actually resorted to cards when they wanted to accomplish things. But there still was enough non-mechanical conflict going on that it wasn't really necessary.
The game opened with a French diplomatic delegation (Jumonville and Marie-Amable being guided by Shingas the Terrible) reaching Fort Necessity. Meanwhile inside, George Washington was formulating a plan for how to deal with the deserter Ignatius Jones. His planwas to free Jones and give him back to the Delaware, though Half-King delayed this plan. Half-King thought they could get more use out of him other ways... possibly by killing him.
Once the French met Washington, Jumonville did his best to piss of Washington, but mainly alienated his translators. Early in the game, he disowned his sister, meaning he had to trust interpreters from the British side. And he slapped Washington in the face and challenged him to a duel, though nothing came of that.
Some people got to scheming quickly, and had some interesting plans. Half-King had a plan to murder Ignatius Jones in the woods and make it look like the French killed him. This would hopefully cause the Delaware to ally with the British, and bring them closer to the Iroquois (also allied with the British). Half-King found and killed a French soldier, but then did not trust William Trent with getting Jones into the woods and killing him.
At some point early on Half-King found the French forces lying in wait while scouting the woods. So he told Washington of their presence. After some consideration, Washington determined that the French hiding in ambush at Deer Lake comprised most of the French forces in the region. Fort Duquesne, therefore, was nearly undefended. He formulated a plan (and later carried it out) to take his men, avoid the French and attack Fort Duquesne.
Somehow in the midst of scheming and being insulted in French, Washington found time to get it on with his French girlfriend. This later resulted in an anachronistic high-five between Washington and (I think) Half-King.
Shingas the Terrible turned out to be less terrible and less hateful of the British than one might have imagined. His secret love of French Margaret counted for more than his hatred of the Brits, I guess. He spent much of the game trying to get her away from the battle. Eventually, Shingas confessed his love to her (while escorting away a newly freed Ignatius Jones) in a touching sort of scene. French Margaret wasn't sure how to react, but eventually decided to go with Shingas at the end of the game, as the Delaware and Iroquois both got away from the fight between the British and the French. Ignatius Jones also gave Shingas a nice pep talk about how to make cross-cultural relationships work out.
William Trent wound up acting as de facto translator for Washington and Jumonville. I was a bit surprised that Washington would trust Trent that much, but Trent did try to undermine Washington in other ways. Trent was the one who fast-talked a guard into freeing IgnatiusJones, by telling him that the plan for secretly freeing Jones was Washington's special diplomacy move to help befriend the delware. The guard believed this, and that's actually what freeing Jones did do, but I think it's possible that at the time Trent was planning on murdering Jones. It's not clear to me when the "frame the French" plan was abandoned. In the end, Trent and a handful of men were left in Fort Necessity as a decoy, and sent to a fake rendezvous point while Washington went on to attack Fort Duquesne.
I'm a little unclear on some of what happened between the native tribes, but the freeing of Ignatius Jones (and possibly Shingas's secret love?) made the Delaware more willing to work with the Iroquois, so in the end they were working together and evacuating Fort Necessity together. I am also unsure what happened to Marie-Amable about two-thirds of the way through the game, but she apparently was escorted away to somewhere safe (Gist's outpost, I think, which shows I wasn't the only one doing my homework). The ten men who escorted her were chosen because they were the ten ugliest men in Washington's militia... I guess he didn't want any potential romantic rivals.
The game finally came to a climax when Washington was gathering his troops for evacuation, and Jumonville came up demanding in French to know what was going on. When he did not get an answer, Jumonville struck Washington in front of all the troops, who then attacked Jumonville. French Margaret decided to help the attack on her half-brother, so Jumonville was killed in the camp (thus ensuring the French and Indian War would start as history expected it to). Thereafter, Washington and the native nations left fort necessity, leaving just a skeleton crew with Trent to fool the French waiting nearby.
I'm sure that's only a fraction of what happened. And I'm sure it's also pretty fragmentary. It's hard to take all the strands of a LARP like this and make it into a coherent narrative; there is so much going on, and often I as GM don't know everything that is happening and/or why a character makes the choices that they do. But it hopefully gives some idea the sort of things that happened.
Everyone reportedly enjoyed themselves. The situation produced enough interaction to keep everyone entertained for about an hour and a half once we started playing. At the end, most conflicts were resolved and everyone got more-or-less what they wanted. I am personally pleased by how everything turned out. As always, I feared it could all fall apart at the last minute in some unexpected way. This time, at least, it didn't.
I think the game sparked some interest in the French and Indian War era among some of the players. At least one researched stuff ahead of time, and two or three others said afterwards that they were more interested in the timeframe because of the game. Being educational was a secondary goal at best. (I had a list of historical innacuracies, but stopped keeping track when it got too long.) But if it inspired a desire for learning, then that is pretty awesome, overall.
Things I Might Change If I Ran It Again:
Possibly make Half-King more antagonistic to the Delaware, and make the Delaware hate him more. Should have defined the Iroquois's tyranny of the delaware a bit better.
Focus less on the rules and conflict system, as it didn't come into play very much. Possibly make special abilities more useul, though if the conflict is never used then they're kinda irelevant.
Figure out better reasons for people to move around the larpspace. As it was, everything happened "in the fort" or "outside the fort" and later "far away from the fort". Two rooms I had defined went unused. I guess maybe I just didn't predict where characters would want to go. Should have had the bedroom be the fort's prison cell, instead of Washington's quarters.
None of those are major sticking points, though. The game was totally successful with those things as they were. And I'm not really sure what else I would want to change.
So there you have it. That was longer than I thought it would be, but a lot happened.
Showing posts with label LARP report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LARP report. Show all posts
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
May LARP report
Cheyenne was unable to attend this month (due to being gainfully employed), so requested a more thorough LARP report. Which is probably a good idea, anyway, as I should do a better job supporting this blog-space, if it is to be meaningful to anyone.
As I hope some of the various larps in the future will be, May's game changed up a lot of how the game was played. There were no detailed character backgrounds, or indeed any pregenerated characters at all. We had a prescripted series of four scenes, and players swapped roles around halfway through the game. There was basically no secret information that the players could have read and spoiled the game ahead of time. There were few secret agendas. And everyone spent the entire game sitting down, probably making it the least larp-like larp so far.
Maybe I should go back and start from the beginning:
This month's larp scenario is taken almost entirely from Greg Stolze's free sper-simple RPG Executive Decision. The players roleplayed being the President of the United States and his Cabinet and miscellaneous advisers trying to deal with some political controversies.
Basically, the game went like this: Everyone got two agenda card that I had made, then chose one of several roles available. Each job in the presidential administration had its own attached agenda, too.
So there weren't any established characters. Just some randomly generated characters. And no one had any fictional names, which got some player rebellion. Some people (well, one) wanted people to have fictional character names, but most didn't care, so they all wound up just using people's real names for their fictional cabinet officials. There were some Name Badges, but they really just identified background information others should know about some characters, like if they were the token member of an opposing political party. These tied into some of the agendas (any with a star in the upper corner). My favorite was the "Protect your job" agenda, since any player that got that agenda had a choice of why their job was in danger. Did they pilot a massive program that failed miserably? Or say something politically insensitive on national television? (Those were the two chosen when the agenda came up.)
Anyway, once people knew what they were trying to do, everyone sat together at a big table, presented themselves and their position and such, and then they were given some crisis that they had to deal with. And then they all would discuss what the president's administration should do until they reached a consensus. In said discussion, different people would try to advance their individual agendas.
The first crisis involved a missing former secretary of the president's, confidential private and politically controversial memo being leaked (along with a terse but vaguely positive response) being leaked to the press. The memo intersected with a lot of different agendas people had, involving giant corporations, environmental concerns, military matters and the like, all mixed together in a tangled mess. Which is often how politics is, in my experience.
The second scenario involved a tiny former Soviet state accidentally capturing an American fighter jet, which worried nearby, antagonistic Russia greatly. And the country acted stupid and went to the international press before the American government, showing the plane and the pretty young female pilot on CNN.
Both these dilemmas were taken straight from the original Executive Decision document. I can't really take any credit for them, myself.
After the cabinet reached a consensus on what to do in each of these cases, then the President (and/or Press Secretary) needed to field questions from the journalists at the press briefing. We took all the players downstairs, gave them an alternate reporter identity to play for a moment, then the President or Secretary had to come down to lots of lights shining right in their eyes and give a speech and answer questions.
More on how the scenarios actually played out, later. And what worked, what didn't, etc.
As I hope some of the various larps in the future will be, May's game changed up a lot of how the game was played. There were no detailed character backgrounds, or indeed any pregenerated characters at all. We had a prescripted series of four scenes, and players swapped roles around halfway through the game. There was basically no secret information that the players could have read and spoiled the game ahead of time. There were few secret agendas. And everyone spent the entire game sitting down, probably making it the least larp-like larp so far.
Maybe I should go back and start from the beginning:
This month's larp scenario is taken almost entirely from Greg Stolze's free sper-simple RPG Executive Decision. The players roleplayed being the President of the United States and his Cabinet and miscellaneous advisers trying to deal with some political controversies.
Basically, the game went like this: Everyone got two agenda card that I had made, then chose one of several roles available. Each job in the presidential administration had its own attached agenda, too.
So there weren't any established characters. Just some randomly generated characters. And no one had any fictional names, which got some player rebellion. Some people (well, one) wanted people to have fictional character names, but most didn't care, so they all wound up just using people's real names for their fictional cabinet officials. There were some Name Badges, but they really just identified background information others should know about some characters, like if they were the token member of an opposing political party. These tied into some of the agendas (any with a star in the upper corner). My favorite was the "Protect your job" agenda, since any player that got that agenda had a choice of why their job was in danger. Did they pilot a massive program that failed miserably? Or say something politically insensitive on national television? (Those were the two chosen when the agenda came up.)
Anyway, once people knew what they were trying to do, everyone sat together at a big table, presented themselves and their position and such, and then they were given some crisis that they had to deal with. And then they all would discuss what the president's administration should do until they reached a consensus. In said discussion, different people would try to advance their individual agendas.
The first crisis involved a missing former secretary of the president's, confidential private and politically controversial memo being leaked (along with a terse but vaguely positive response) being leaked to the press. The memo intersected with a lot of different agendas people had, involving giant corporations, environmental concerns, military matters and the like, all mixed together in a tangled mess. Which is often how politics is, in my experience.
The second scenario involved a tiny former Soviet state accidentally capturing an American fighter jet, which worried nearby, antagonistic Russia greatly. And the country acted stupid and went to the international press before the American government, showing the plane and the pretty young female pilot on CNN.
Both these dilemmas were taken straight from the original Executive Decision document. I can't really take any credit for them, myself.
After the cabinet reached a consensus on what to do in each of these cases, then the President (and/or Press Secretary) needed to field questions from the journalists at the press briefing. We took all the players downstairs, gave them an alternate reporter identity to play for a moment, then the President or Secretary had to come down to lots of lights shining right in their eyes and give a speech and answer questions.
More on how the scenarios actually played out, later. And what worked, what didn't, etc.
Monday, April 27, 2009
April LARP: worked out pretty well
Didn't work out perfectly by any means, but most of the players enjoyed themselves a lot, reportedly.
As is the standard operating procedure here, all LARP relevant documents are up online for you to view and/or use for your own purposes.
Since this game was less GM intensive than the previous one, I will try to write up GMing notes so you could run it on your own, if you wanted.
There was a pretty good quantity of awesome in the game, as the hacked together mechanics for the game worked as they were supposed to and the characters interacted with each other. In particular, the poker mechanics meshed nicely into the rest of the game and subtly drew away the PC's ability to accomplish anything without killing someone. There were one or two mistakes on the character sheets, since plots had to be swapped around at the last minute. When two players cancel at the last minute, you have to scramble to adjust how the PCs fit together. But apparently I missed updating a few or the characters who were affected.
One or two players seemed somewhat dissatisfied with parts of the game. I'll see what we can do to rectify things in future months. Speaking of which, I should figure out what next month will be. At this point it's still almost entirely an unknown to me. I'd like something with less PC versus PC conflict, but still have to work out how to do that without increasing the GM workload.
As is the standard operating procedure here, all LARP relevant documents are up online for you to view and/or use for your own purposes.
Since this game was less GM intensive than the previous one, I will try to write up GMing notes so you could run it on your own, if you wanted.
There was a pretty good quantity of awesome in the game, as the hacked together mechanics for the game worked as they were supposed to and the characters interacted with each other. In particular, the poker mechanics meshed nicely into the rest of the game and subtly drew away the PC's ability to accomplish anything without killing someone. There were one or two mistakes on the character sheets, since plots had to be swapped around at the last minute. When two players cancel at the last minute, you have to scramble to adjust how the PCs fit together. But apparently I missed updating a few or the characters who were affected.
One or two players seemed somewhat dissatisfied with parts of the game. I'll see what we can do to rectify things in future months. Speaking of which, I should figure out what next month will be. At this point it's still almost entirely an unknown to me. I'd like something with less PC versus PC conflict, but still have to work out how to do that without increasing the GM workload.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
As mentioned, the March game happened over the weekend. It seemed to me to be more low-key than the last one, though player comments indicate the opposite. The February one seemed to me as GM crazy and hyper-kinetic, whereas this one seemed a more subtle game. But players said that they had chunks where they weren't doing anything in February, but were constantly busy in March. This seems interesting to me, though I wonder about the phenomenon. Is it just a difference in my perspective as GM versus their perspective as players? Could I in some way control the flow of play to keep people constantly active? It always seems to me that once play begins I as GM have very little control over what happens (which is a good thing).
Actually, it's possible that this game was more predictable and according-to-plan than previous games. Like things happened as we expected them to, rather than veering off in unexpected ways. Except when the alien in a space-time vortex got stuck inside Josh's brain. That was unexpected, which meant we didn't have the proper character sheet prepared. But lots of other things happened very much as I had hoped they would, from Josh's crazed, bestial survivor interacting with the PCs to the conflict between military and scientists to the final reunion between Rachel Gaumata and Manassah Rayburn in his proper body. This was good, since it meant the game went mostly as we planned for, though it also meant there weren't as many moments where I as GM was amazed by the player's awesome creativity in solutions.
At times I was amazed at how fast the players figured stuff out. The puzzle for the door to upstairs was solved in like five minutes, and the captain's safe didn't take much longer to open. By the end of the game, they had figured out much of the mystery, though they became more distracted by events on the station while they were there. Between that and not asking the space/time vortex/alien the right questions, they never got quite the entire story what happened previously. But they got a good chunk, and possibly could get more from alien minds stored in crystals.
There were a lot of props in this game. An entire trunkful, and I think they did their job very well. It was a game about exploration and the external environment, so the larger number of props helped the players focus outwardly rather than on PC interactions (though there were plenty of those as well). While I was GMing, I saw Wendy playing a drug addict totally miss the drugs she was seeking because of all the other props in the medical kit. And the security badge prop helped the PCs solve how to open the captain's safe in a way a simple card or something wouldn't have. And Cheyenne as a corporate stooge was apparently hoarding crystals the entire game, an awesome use of props right there.
The science fiction background I had come up with seemed to work out pretty well. It threaded in and out of character backgrounds and documents, so that the station being on a distant outpost seemed fairly real. I will have to think more about how to best use setting information in a LARP.
What would I do differently if I ran it again? Write up a sheet for the time/space vortex alien, firstly. Possibly write up an entry for Hong Jacobson, too, so the PCs might find him and he might lie to them about what happened. There needed to be a bit more information about what happened right before the station stopped communicating, and Hong could give some of it. The alien could give more, but in both cases the difficulty would be in getting that information out of them. Scatter Dr. Koop's notes across more of the station.
I did have a couple moments of filling in additional details on the background, after the game was over. One thought was a different explanation of why there were only two military characters. Another explained why Lt. Washington didn't recognize Manassah Rayburn. Neither of these ideas is really very useful to me any more, but they would have been good a few days ago.
Regardless, this game worked out very well. I personally liked giving all the characters names assembled at random from the "Space Cowboy" entry in the Story Games Name Project. Then again, I always have enjoyed giving character ridiculously elaborate names, as my D&D character If-Not-for-The-Grace-Of-The-Gods-Above-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Varnamo. (He's named after a historical Puritan. And a piece of furniture from Ikea.)
I will attempt to write up directions for running the LARP, though we'll see how long that would go. If the last month's instructions went nine pages long, how long would this month's instructions be? We may find out, in another post.
Actually, it's possible that this game was more predictable and according-to-plan than previous games. Like things happened as we expected them to, rather than veering off in unexpected ways. Except when the alien in a space-time vortex got stuck inside Josh's brain. That was unexpected, which meant we didn't have the proper character sheet prepared. But lots of other things happened very much as I had hoped they would, from Josh's crazed, bestial survivor interacting with the PCs to the conflict between military and scientists to the final reunion between Rachel Gaumata and Manassah Rayburn in his proper body. This was good, since it meant the game went mostly as we planned for, though it also meant there weren't as many moments where I as GM was amazed by the player's awesome creativity in solutions.
At times I was amazed at how fast the players figured stuff out. The puzzle for the door to upstairs was solved in like five minutes, and the captain's safe didn't take much longer to open. By the end of the game, they had figured out much of the mystery, though they became more distracted by events on the station while they were there. Between that and not asking the space/time vortex/alien the right questions, they never got quite the entire story what happened previously. But they got a good chunk, and possibly could get more from alien minds stored in crystals.
There were a lot of props in this game. An entire trunkful, and I think they did their job very well. It was a game about exploration and the external environment, so the larger number of props helped the players focus outwardly rather than on PC interactions (though there were plenty of those as well). While I was GMing, I saw Wendy playing a drug addict totally miss the drugs she was seeking because of all the other props in the medical kit. And the security badge prop helped the PCs solve how to open the captain's safe in a way a simple card or something wouldn't have. And Cheyenne as a corporate stooge was apparently hoarding crystals the entire game, an awesome use of props right there.
The science fiction background I had come up with seemed to work out pretty well. It threaded in and out of character backgrounds and documents, so that the station being on a distant outpost seemed fairly real. I will have to think more about how to best use setting information in a LARP.
What would I do differently if I ran it again? Write up a sheet for the time/space vortex alien, firstly. Possibly write up an entry for Hong Jacobson, too, so the PCs might find him and he might lie to them about what happened. There needed to be a bit more information about what happened right before the station stopped communicating, and Hong could give some of it. The alien could give more, but in both cases the difficulty would be in getting that information out of them. Scatter Dr. Koop's notes across more of the station.
I did have a couple moments of filling in additional details on the background, after the game was over. One thought was a different explanation of why there were only two military characters. Another explained why Lt. Washington didn't recognize Manassah Rayburn. Neither of these ideas is really very useful to me any more, but they would have been good a few days ago.
Regardless, this game worked out very well. I personally liked giving all the characters names assembled at random from the "Space Cowboy" entry in the Story Games Name Project. Then again, I always have enjoyed giving character ridiculously elaborate names, as my D&D character If-Not-for-The-Grace-Of-The-Gods-Above-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Varnamo. (He's named after a historical Puritan. And a piece of furniture from Ikea.)
I will attempt to write up directions for running the LARP, though we'll see how long that would go. If the last month's instructions went nine pages long, how long would this month's instructions be? We may find out, in another post.
Monday, March 30, 2009
March LARP: Successful
The short form is that the March LARP happened over the weekend. And that it worked very well.
You can see all the documents online as is by now the standard operating procedure. I might go more into what happened and/or how to run the game later. But not today. This game is probably harder than the last one to run based on what I had written, because so much of it was secrets and mysteries and never entirely written down.
Anyone who wasn't there could read the data and come to their own conclusions as to what happened. That might be pretty cool, actually. Like some sort of experimental novel.
You can see all the documents online as is by now the standard operating procedure. I might go more into what happened and/or how to run the game later. But not today. This game is probably harder than the last one to run based on what I had written, because so much of it was secrets and mysteries and never entirely written down.
Anyone who wasn't there could read the data and come to their own conclusions as to what happened. That might be pretty cool, actually. Like some sort of experimental novel.
Monday, March 2, 2009
February LARP report
Despite my total failure at logistics, the game went really well. I though some of the time I had scheduled for 7:30, when I in fact scheduled for 7:00, so we wound up even later than I though we were. Then when we got there, I realized I had everything except the character sheets. Which are, you know, the most important part. So Amber had to drive back to our house to get them, then return.
But that meant that I had half and hour or so to explain to everyone the situation, spell out what each room meant in game, point out the props, etc. And each player had the chance to see what everyone else’s name badges (which we had) and get a little idea of the other character (and a bit about themselves, too).
The Davis family costume trunk served very well for this game. The Bank Robbery game in January had little costuming involved, but everyone had at least a bit to make them look superheroic. Seaman wore a cape, which I thought got the right useless superhero vibe: how do you swim underwater while wearing a cape? Warning Sean ahead of time that he was playing a Viking meant he had some Nero gear, including a vest of chainmail, so his costume was awesome. Hopefully Amber will post some pictures of the game soon so other people can see how it all looked.
Once we got character sheets, everything got going smoothly. The really basic conflict system seemed to work very well, and it seemed to encourage the behavior I wanted to encourage. Actually, it’s surprising how many of my plans actually went as planned, like Copycat not having any powers but always avoiding having to show off his powers (which then put some suspicion on him as the game went on).
Lots of spontaneously entertaining things happened in game. Bjorn Yesterday wound up worshipping Detachable Head as a god, because he saw the Head detach and was confused and terrified. Powerbroker initially tried to explain this as a demon, then magic, but both those encouraged Bjorn to attack, so eventually the only excuse he’d accept was the Head was a god and that was a miracle. Bjorn then followed the Head around and gave him presents and things.
Copycat at one point was cornered by Powerbroker, who wanted to see Copycat’s (nonexistent) ability to duplicate superpowers in action. This was to prove Copycat wasn’t the villainous Brainjack. Using her ability to speak any language, she said something in Swedish about Ikea, so Copycat seized on the only word he recognized and said (in English) “I love Ikea!”. Powerbroker, revising the experiment, tried to have Nestor talk to Copycat in Swedish, but Copycat distracted Nestor by asking or an autograph and asking about stories from back in Nestor’s heyday. By the time the story was done, Nestor’s senile brain had forgotten about the Swedish conversation.
At one point, Nestor determined that maybe Seaman’s true power would only show up under great duress, so he encouraged Seaman to endanger himself or stop drinking water constantly. Seaman didn’t like this plan (what if Nestor was wrong and it just killed him?). So we never got to test it, but I would have gone along with it, because I though it was funny.
There was a lot of good stuff going on in the LARP. I had a lot of fun watching it, and I think everyone else did, too. I think it was more successful than the Bank Robbery larp, overall. Let’s hope next month will be even better than this one. Most of the LARP documents are online, though I'm trying to write up a document about "How to run this game" that might make more stuff clear.
But that meant that I had half and hour or so to explain to everyone the situation, spell out what each room meant in game, point out the props, etc. And each player had the chance to see what everyone else’s name badges (which we had) and get a little idea of the other character (and a bit about themselves, too).
The Davis family costume trunk served very well for this game. The Bank Robbery game in January had little costuming involved, but everyone had at least a bit to make them look superheroic. Seaman wore a cape, which I thought got the right useless superhero vibe: how do you swim underwater while wearing a cape? Warning Sean ahead of time that he was playing a Viking meant he had some Nero gear, including a vest of chainmail, so his costume was awesome. Hopefully Amber will post some pictures of the game soon so other people can see how it all looked.
Once we got character sheets, everything got going smoothly. The really basic conflict system seemed to work very well, and it seemed to encourage the behavior I wanted to encourage. Actually, it’s surprising how many of my plans actually went as planned, like Copycat not having any powers but always avoiding having to show off his powers (which then put some suspicion on him as the game went on).
Lots of spontaneously entertaining things happened in game. Bjorn Yesterday wound up worshipping Detachable Head as a god, because he saw the Head detach and was confused and terrified. Powerbroker initially tried to explain this as a demon, then magic, but both those encouraged Bjorn to attack, so eventually the only excuse he’d accept was the Head was a god and that was a miracle. Bjorn then followed the Head around and gave him presents and things.
Copycat at one point was cornered by Powerbroker, who wanted to see Copycat’s (nonexistent) ability to duplicate superpowers in action. This was to prove Copycat wasn’t the villainous Brainjack. Using her ability to speak any language, she said something in Swedish about Ikea, so Copycat seized on the only word he recognized and said (in English) “I love Ikea!”. Powerbroker, revising the experiment, tried to have Nestor talk to Copycat in Swedish, but Copycat distracted Nestor by asking or an autograph and asking about stories from back in Nestor’s heyday. By the time the story was done, Nestor’s senile brain had forgotten about the Swedish conversation.
At one point, Nestor determined that maybe Seaman’s true power would only show up under great duress, so he encouraged Seaman to endanger himself or stop drinking water constantly. Seaman didn’t like this plan (what if Nestor was wrong and it just killed him?). So we never got to test it, but I would have gone along with it, because I though it was funny.
There was a lot of good stuff going on in the LARP. I had a lot of fun watching it, and I think everyone else did, too. I think it was more successful than the Bank Robbery larp, overall. Let’s hope next month will be even better than this one. Most of the LARP documents are online, though I'm trying to write up a document about "How to run this game" that might make more stuff clear.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
